Open Invitation
by Dromeda
Summary: Rogue and Logan have a late-night conversation. Takes place after Episode #26.


**Open Invitation**

Rogue hadn't noticed him sitting there in the dark kitchen—his chair angled towards the window and a beer in hand—until she'd flipped on the lights and nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Jesus, Logan! Ya scared the hell outta me! What're you doing sitting there in the dark?" she admonished as she shuffled to the refrigerator.

"Don't need the lights," he replied, bringing his beer to his lips.

_True enough_ Rogue thought to herself as she rummaged through the fridge. She had experienced his mutation more than once and, with those heightened senses, the amount of moonlight filtering in through the window would be more than enough to see by.

Rogue briefly considered snagging one of Logan's beers for herself. But the grumble in her stomach and the nausea thick in her throat had her reaching for the ginger ale just as Logan asked: "So what're you doing up?"

With a sigh she cracked open the can and shut the refrigerator door. "The ham and cheese sub I had for dinner, mostly," Rogue answered, pulling out the chair next to his and plopping into it. "I think the meat was off."

Either that or it was the mayonnaise. She'd told them no mayo, but it had come slathered in it and she'd been too hungry at the time to make a fuss. _Probably put it there to cover-up their icky, expired meat._

Logan grunted. "And here I thought you had a cast-iron stomach."

"No, that would be Piotr."

"Huh. Never could keep the two of you straight." Logan shrugged and finished off his beer.

"Smartass," she mumbled over her can of ginger ale. The corner of his mouth lifted in response as he got up to get another beer. Mission accomplished, he tossed the bottle cap onto the long wooden dinner table where it clanged and briefly spun.

She hated being obvious so she blamed her aching stomach on her inability not to stare as he tipped his head back and took the first pull from the bottle; her eyes locked on the play of his throat muscles as he swallowed. His eyes suddenly shifted to hers as he drank and she quickly looked away. She waited for him to toss out some flippant remark but he simply retook his seat and asked "What else?"

Thrown, Rogue's brow creased. "Huh?"

"You said 'mostly'," Logan reminded. "What else is keeping you up?"

"Oh," she cringed. Her least favorite subject ever and the last thing she wanted to talk about, especially with Logan. "Well, um, you know my room is across the hall from Scott's and, well, he and Jean are sorta still, um, _reuniting_." A horrible thought suddenly occurred to her and her eyes narrowed, "That's not why you're down here sittin' in dark, is it? You're not getting all moody and broody again 'cause Jean's back and with Scott?"

Logan brought up his right hand and scrubbed at his face tiredly. "Darlin', this," he motioned with his beer bottle to the two empties on the table; the kitchen around them, "is pretty much the status quo for me."

Yeah, that was another thing she had experienced first hand: Logan's nightmares. The repressed memories of green-liquid filled tanks, the mutterings of mad scientists as they carved into his flesh. The white-hot searing agony of molten Adamantium bonding to bone that rose to the surface of his mind and robbed him of his sleep.

"Besides," he continued, "that stuff with Jean is water under the bridge."

"_Really_?" Rogue wanted to believe him, she really did. But when it came to Logan and Jean, precedent had been set.

"Really." He said it like he meant it.

"Good." Rogue knew her relief was obvious, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Again she blamed it all on her stomach. "I like you a whole lot better when you're not mooning over Jean Grey."

Logan chuckled, "Mooning?"

"Yes, mooning."

"Can't say I remember any of that."

She smirked, "Oh, you most certainly did. It wasn't pretty."

"Well, I'm happy to inform you there's no mooning on my agenda."

"Good."

"So you've got nothing to be jealous about."

Rogue's jaw dropped. "Jealous? You've got to be kidding?"

Logan arched an eyebrow. "Why else would all that stuff with Jean bother you?"

Rogue stared at him incredulously. She knew he'd suffered from Jean Grey tunnel-vision during that time but this was ridiculous. "Now I know you're pulling my leg 'cause if you sit there and tell me you don't remember I will take that beer bottle and shove it up your ass!"

The lift of his eyebrow and the tilt of his head spoke volumes to her. She pushed herself out of her seat in a huff and over to the kitchen sink. "Oh my God! You honestly don't remember, do you?"

He tapped his temple with an index finger. "Swiss cheese." _Nice try, cowboy, but no dice_ Rogue thought. Yes, he had holes in his memory, but those were of events that had happened way before he'd even met Charles Xavier and his X-Men. "So how's about we leave the bottle out of it and you refresh my memory?" Logan finished.

She shook her head in annoyance and gripped the edge of the countertop so hard that her fingers ached. Logan could be thick-headed at times, but he wasn't dumb. If he didn't remember had happened it was because, to him, the event itself had been trivial and that hurt. She could recall it like it was yesterday. You'd think he would remember considering Jean had been there, too.

Jean Grey. It always comes back to her in the end. The first real conversation she's had with Logan since coming back to them from the Brotherhood—the first that didn't have to do with missions and bad guys and horrible visions of the future—and the prime focus is Jean Grey. Always Jean Grey.

"Rogue?" She knew that Logan wouldn't let her leave this kitchen until she'd filled in the blanks. She'd brought it up in the first place so perhaps it was fitting that she'd have to once again suffer the memories. Didn't mean she had to look at him while she talked; besides, the nearly-full moon peeking in through the curtain-less window was much easier to talk to.

With a sigh Rogue began, "When you started chasin' Jean you became a completely different person. And I don't mean that in a good way." She paused and glanced over her right shoulder to gauge his reaction. There wasn't any. His expression was completely closed-off. _Damn his poker face!_ He was harder to read than that Stephenie Meyer Twilight bullshit that Kitty loved so much and kept trying to foist on her.

Her glance returned to the window and she continued. "You'd gotten back from some mission the Professor had sent you on and I hadn't seen hide nor hair of you." He'd always touch base with her when he returned from one of his many trips away from the mansion, it was her one consolation. This time he hadn't. "I finally found you in the Danger Room, but you weren't alone. You had Jean pressed against the wall and, when you noticed me standing there, you completely went off. You whipped around and popped the claws, looking like you wanted nothing more than to eviscerate me from stem to stern. Of course you cussed a blue streak, but that's nothing new. What hurt was how you were looking at me: like I was Magneto, the MRD, and all the rest of your enemies rolled into one; like you hated me." He hadn't even looked at her like that during her brief foray with the Brotherhood. "After that, you had nothing to do with me. The only time you sought me out was to tell me you were going away again. The explosion happened soon after and you know the rest."

She hadn't heard him get up, but Logan was suddenly at her side. "Rogue, look at me." He waited for her to comply before continuing, "I've never hated you. _Never_. Yeah, there've been times I've wanted nothing better than to give you a swift kick up the ass-for instance, when you decided that the best way to find out what the Brotherhood had up their sleeves was to join them." She rolled her eyes; he ignored it and kept on. "You'd have to do something so terrible that I can't even think of right now for me to hate you so just get that outta your head right now. Got it?"

Rogue nodded. "Yeah."

"Good." Logan leaned his forearms on the countertop and looked at her sidelong, "My head was in a bad place back when all that stuff with Jean happened." She opened her mouth to speak but he quickly cut her off, "I ain't makin' excuses—I know I'm a prize asshole—I'm just laying out the facts. I was angry and frustrated that none of the leads about my past were pannin' out and Xavier's sources were beginning to dry up. I needed something else to focus on and Jean fit the bill. But, like I said, that's all over and done with."

"What if Jean has other plans? What if she wants to pick-up where things left off?" Rogue asked.

Logan snorted. "She won't."

"How can you be so sure?"

He blew out a breath. "She only gave into me 'cause she'd wanted a little walk on the wild side before tyin' herself down to ol' Cyke. And, at the time, I was more than happy to be her bit of rough."

"And now?" Rogue asked warily.

"And now, after all that shit with the Hellfire Club and the Phoenix, I'm pretty damn sure she's had her fill of danger. And I've had my fill of being used."

Rogue wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. Her stomach, on the other hand, decided that now was a fine time to remind her just how unhappy it was and grumbled loudly. She winced and returned to her seat and her can of ginger ale. Logan pulled a sympathetic face, pushed away from the counter and back to his own seat, which he'd scooted closer to hers, before sitting down. "You know that's most likely food poisoning and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better?"

_So says the man with the healing factor._ "I'm well aware of that."

Logan placed his left hand palm-up on the table. "So why don't you touch me?"

Rogue looked him square in the eye-she wanted him to know she meant it when she said "Because I don't want to use you."

"It ain't usin' when it's freely given." Logan shifted forward in his seat, brought his hand from the table and fisted it in her hair; bringing her face close to his. "I mean that. You need what I got, you take it. Open invitation; no need to ask."

With that he pressed his lips to her forehead and she felt her skin react to the touch; felt the connection between them open. She pushed him away before she took too much from him.

Though the touch had been brief, her mind was now full of him. A hundred thousand thoughts, feelings, memories, and emotions swirled through her brain. She saw, felt the truth in everything he'd said to her tonight and so much more. So much about herself. So much more than she expected. Things she never allowed herself to hope for.

And that wonderful healing factor of his! In the span of a dozen heartbeats her nausea had dissolved into nothingness and the rumbly in her tumbly was gone with the wind.

Rogue relaxed into her chair, eyes closed and a relieved smile on her lips. The scrape of a chair alerted her to Logan moving away. She opened her eyes and saw that he had resumed the position she had found him in: chair tilted towards the large kitchen window, his attention focused on the night sky.

Smile still in place Rogue rose from her seat and walked to the far wall where she flicked off the lights. She'd have his enhanced senses for awhile and he was right: they weren't needed. She made her way back to the table, pushed her chair next to his and sat down. She took one of his bare hands and sandwiched it between her two gloved ones, fingers interlaced, and leaned her head against his t-shirt clad shoulder.

His presence in her head filled in the silence—whispering to her all those things the man next to her, for one reason or another, could never say.

-END-


End file.
